Update Flash IDE Player
Everyone knows that to update your browsers Flash player you just need to visit the Adobe site and follow the “Get Flash” links. Pretty simple stuff, however doing this does not update the Player that the IDE uses, which is the same one used when you open a swf on its own off your HDD. It’s a wee bit more fiddly to update that one and I didn’t find anything directly relating to how to do this so I thought I’d cover it here for future Flashers ?
The first step is to head over here and find the relevant version of Flash for yourself. In my case it’s CS3.
Currently for CS3 the top most update is the “Adobe AIR 1.1 Update”. Just under that is the “Adobe Flash Player Update for Flash CS3 Professional”, that’s the one we’re after. Download that zip, it’s around 42MB.
Once downloaded, unzip it and you’ll have 3 directories and 2 files.
Make sure the Flash IDE is closed and then head to your Flash IDE directory:
// XP
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS3\Players
// Vista
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS3\PlayersYou can check your current Flash Player version by running the FlashPlayer.exe file, choosing Help->About and then looking at the version number there. For me it was 9,0,115.
You’ll notice that it has the same 3 directories and 2 files. Delete all of those and then copy the ones you unzipped into there so it ends up looking the same although with the newer files.
You’re all done. Your IDE player has now been updated.
I’m not sure if you can copy the Flash Player 10 files into there, it might have unexpected consequences. For now I’d just say switch to CS4 if you really want that.
Comments: 2
I believe that this is incorrect. Updating the players found in the Players folder (including the Release and Debug sub-folders) does NOT change the IDE’s Flash Player (the one run via Control -> Test Movie -> in Flash Professional. Instead that Players folder WILL update the stand alone Flash Player and the Debugger Flash Player (Debug -> Debug Movie -> in Flash Professional).
From what I have seen there is NO WAY to update the IDE’s Flash Player unless Adobe provides an updated Flash IDE.
I can’t say this for sure about CS3 because I use CS5. However, if I have missed something, please let me know. There is no literature that I can find about updating the IDE’s player (which is special). Grrrr…
The process I described above does not work with CS5 or CS5.5, all it will do is update the stand alone Flash player on your system which is the one used when you manually open a swf. The Flash player that the IDE uses is stored in a dll file and is only updated when Adobe release an update to the main IDE.